


from the wreckage build a home

by eneiryu



Series: we're built to last [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Car Sex, Lori's Getting the Hell Out of Dodge, Multi, Never Trust Theo to Play by the Rules, reunions of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: Lori glances back and forth between the three of them, and then declares, “You three are anembarrassmentto the species,” but she’s probably still just mad about Brett and Liam hooking up in her Jeep.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken/Brett Talbot
Series: we're built to last [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904557
Comments: 42
Kudos: 102





	from the wreckage build a home

**Author's Note:**

> For [ExtraSteps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraSteps/pseuds/ExtraSteps). Happy birthday!
> 
> Fic and series title from The Wind and The Wave song of the same [name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te6GEfpJjks).

It’s a damn good thing that Brett had impulsively decided to take Lori’s Jeep to go pick up Liam from Klamath’s tiny regional airport, because if he’d tried to complete the drive in his more compact sedan, he’d probably have skidded off the road and _died_ —his alpha status be damned—long before actually arriving. As it is, he still spends the entire drive through the outskirts of Klamath fighting with, alternatively: the steering, the brakes, and the way he can’t see _shit_ through the windshield even with his brights on, as the snowstorm that’d appeared angrily out of fucking _nowhere_ continues to just _dump_ snow from horizon to horizon.

But finally he makes it to the airport, and pulls into the tiny parking lot. The only people outside are those running—and in some cases _sliding,_ their arms scooby-doo-pinwheeling—to and from cars and the main building, so Brett pulls out his phone to text Liam and tell him he’s arrived. The message spends a good few seconds deciding if it wants to send—Brett eyeing the little colored bar across the top of his screen as it fills up—but finally the message bubble containing his _Here_ declares itself sent. Brett drops his phone face down on his thigh, and leans his head back against his headrest with a low, quiet exhale as he lets his eyes slip shut.

Of course, it means he ends up jumping hard enough to bang his knee on the underside of the wheel when someone yanks at the passenger side door handle, and then—when it doesn’t open—knocks on the window. Brett swallows his curse as he looks a little wildly over at Liam, who’s standing outside and grinning, and then he hurries to unlock the car. Liam _immediately_ pulls open the door, letting in a _blast_ of cold air and swirling snow as he throws himself inside, and then gets the door slammed quickly back shut.

“ _Christ,_ ” he swears, immediately twisting around to toss his snow-dusted duffel into the Jeep’s backseat. “I was genuinely worried that the pilots were just going to like, turn the whole plane around at one point because of the—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish. As he’d started to twist back around, Brett had leaned sideways and gotten a hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him into a hard, firm kiss. Liam makes a startled noise against his mouth, but then shudders a little and melts into it. Brett tightens his hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him harder.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, maybe half a minute or so later. That’s about how long it takes for the embarrassment at the force of his reaction to start seeping in, because _jesus_ : he hadn’t even managed to let Liam get a full sentence out. “Sorry, I just…”

He trails off, but Liam just grins at him, crinkle-eyed and unconcerned. Their faces are close enough still for them to be sharing air, Brett’s fingers still anchored around the back of Liam’s neck. Liam just layers his own fingers over Brett’s. “Yeah, I know you were _just_ ,” he agrees teasingly. He presses down harder, so that the tips of Brett’s fingers dig into the space right at the top of Liam’s spine; the place where his and Theo’s and Brett’s awareness of each other all lives. “I could feel it.”

Brett can feel himself flushing, some, but Liam just darts forward and kisses him again, his own hands coming up to cradle either side of Brett’s face as he does. Brett swallows a groan and pulls him in a little harder, stretching Liam out over the Jeep’s console between them. 

But finally he pulls back. “We should, uh,” he says, though his thoughts still feel scattered, and the few he _can_ manage to yank back together are entirely focused on Liam’s warmth, and his taste, and his _scent_. It’d been too goddamn _long_. “We should get out of here before we get snowed in.”

Liam turns his head slightly—his forehead resting against Brett’s own—to glance out the windshield at the still heavily-swirling snow. “Good point,” he agrees. 

He sits back—much to Brett’s reflexive disappointment—and starts wrestling with his seatbelt. Brett drags his attention away from him, and gets the Jeep started.

The roads are bad and only getting worse, so while Brett is, Scout’s honor, genuinely interested in getting all of Liam’s updates from his first few weeks of his spring semester, he can’t do much more than grunt and hum at appropriate intervals to show he’s actively listening as he tries to keep them from skidding on a patch of black ice and flipping, or whatever. Liam doesn’t seem to mind. He seems amused as all _hell_ , actually: he keeps peppering in completely absurd asides and then cracking himself up when Brett accidentally rolls right through them or agrees. 

Brett risks glancing away from the road just long enough to shoot him a dry, unimpressed look, which only sets Liam to laughing _harder._

But the farther away from Klamath they get, the more the storm—and therefore the roads—clear up. Eventually Brett’s able to relax his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and sit back a little further in his seat, and glance over at Liam as he probes, “You added a PoliSci minor?”

Liam shrugs, looking away from him for the moment to look out the windshield, which is how Brett knows that the topic is actually important to him, for all that he’s trying to play it off. “Yeah, well. You know. Scott’s getting more and more involved with pack and clan politics, so. Not to _mention,_ ” he adds, with his shit-eating grin just _blooming_ right back over his face, “I’ve got my ambassador duties to live up to.”

Brett just rolls his eyes. Considering Liam is _his_ ambassador, he thinks there’s probably very little that Liam could actually do to fail at his duties, short of like, burning down the farmhouse where Brett and Lori live. Still, Brett’s as much if not _greater_ a shit than Liam, so he pastes a thoughtful expression on his face and idly points out, “Yeah, you know, I _do_ have some feedback on your performance lately…”

Liam squawks in outrage and smacks him with the beanie he’d yanked off his head once the heat in the Jeep had really kicked on. It’d left his hair a rioting mess, and it doesn’t get less so when Liam suddenly frowns lightly and looks down to dig his phone out of his pocket.

“Theo?” Brett predicts. He’d felt his own pocket buzz, though he hadn’t risked looking away from the road to check it.

Liam nods, his disappointment writ clear across his face as he relays, “He says that the lead him and Argent had been chasing worked out, and unless they somehow manage to wrap it up _really_ fast, he won’t be able to make it.” He swallows a sigh that Brett can nonetheless hear, and drops his phone into his lap as he switches his gaze to the window.

“Sorry,” Brett tells him, unsure why _he’s_ apologizing to Liam, but feeling the need to do it anyway. “I know you were looking forward to seeing him.”

“Nah,” Liam dismisses, not unkindly. He rolls his head sideways on his headrest so that he’s grinning softly at Brett. “I saw him a few weeks ago before he and Argent left on this particular trip.” He sighs for real this time and explains, “It’s more that I was looking forward to _all_ of us being together for the first time in a while, you know?”

Oh, Brett _knows_. Theo had been splitting his time pretty evenly between Beacon Hills, UCLA, and the Oregon farmhouse when he wasn’t off hunting down Monroe and her psychotic band of fanatics, and Liam had made it up for the odd weekend, depending, but the last time all three of their schedules had somehow managed to overlap had been over four months ago.

Brett _knows._

He—also knows the particular blooming _warmth_ that starts to spice Liam’s scent. And even if he didn’t, he’d know the way that Liam _squirms_ a little in his seat, suddenly restless. He looks over, eyebrows climbing.

“What?” Liam demands, but there’s a flush breaking out over the tops of his cheeks, and he definitely already knows _what_. Brett grins.

“Remembering the good time you had with Theo a few weeks ago, are you,” he interprets, and Liam’s cheeks go from flushing to _flaming._ He opens and closes his mouth a few times, but nothing comes out. 

But then his eyes narrow slightly.

Brett’s instincts sit up and take notice, just in time for Liam to retort, “Why, you didn’t?,” in a way that tells Brett as much as he needs to know about _exactly_ how much time Liam and Theo had been spending together; that insinuating reply had Theo’s fingerprints _all_ _over_ it. 

Just like Theo’s fingerprints had been _all over_ Liam’s hips, and ass, a few weeks ago, the thumbprint smudges of them appearing as bruises on Liam’s skin for the half-second it took Liam’s healing to erase them as Theo had pinned Liam facedown, Theo’s own hips _pistoning_ as he’d fucked Liam right into the mattress below them. Theo had propped up his phone on the nightstand so that Brett could see, and Brett had come _seconds_ after Liam had, Liam’s soft rising wail of Theo’s name forming the background noise as Brett had bucked up into his own fist. Theo had kept fucking Liam right on through Liam’s orgasm, and the choked-off groan he’d given when he’d finally tipped over the edge himself had been enough to cause Brett’s spent cock to twitch.

Brett looks at Liam over the width of the Jeep. Liam looks right back. 

“ _Shit,_ ” Brett swears, and jerks the wheel sideways. They’re in the middle of nowhere on a rural highway that’s even _less_ traveled given the storm, and so there are no other cars around to honk or slam on their brakes or otherwise protest as Liam barely waits for Brett to get the Jeep parked on the shoulder before he’s all but _throwing_ himself over the console, and into Brett’s lap.

Brett doesn’t complain, just drops one hand to Liam’s hip to hold him steady as Brett grinds _up_ against the curve of his ass, and drops the other to his seat controls so he can release the lever, and jam his seat as far back as it can go. The extra space means Liam can settle even more firmly in his lap and Liam _does,_ a moan already spilling from his lips as he grinds _down_ to meet Brett’s restlessly rocking hips. Brett lifts the hand he’d had on the seat controls and gets it wrapped around Liam’s jaw, his other arm wrapping around Liam’s waist and _dragging_ him more completely against himself.

“Oh. Oh, fuck,” Liam gasps, his hips _rolling_ now. He opens his mouth for Brett’s questing tongue and then _meets_ it, shuddering out another low sound as Brett chases Liam’s own tongue back between his lips, and then keeps it there as he kisses him deep and thoroughly and relentlessly.

There’s a decent chance Brett’s eyes are flaring red behind his closed eyelids. He can sure as hell _feel_ the way his arm is tight around Liam’s waist, his fingers around Liam’s jaw; can feel the way he’s pressing _down,_ pressing _at,_ his awareness of Liam living at the base of his skull, trying to get closer there, too. Liam groans and shudders and goes a little limp against him, his fingers digging into and then clutching at Brett’s shirt over his chest. Brett pulls him in just that much more, the hand he’d had on Liam’s face dropping to wrap around his shoulders. 

It means he can keep holding Liam to him even as he starts skating the arm he’d had around Liam’s waist down, down, until his fingers are _just_ brushing the waistband of his jeans, the tighter elastic of his briefs. Liam _whines,_ high in his throat, and bucks forward against him before pressing _instantly_ back against Brett’s hand. Brett groans and breaks away from Liam’s mouth to press his face to the side of Liam’s, one hand rising to hold Liam’s head to his shoulder and his other dipping _lower,_ sliding in-between the waistband of Liam’s briefs and his skin.

“Oh, god, _please,_ ” Liam breathily begs, so Brett obliges him: he slides his fingers the rest of the way down the crack of Liam’s ass until he can press them firmly against his rim. 

He doesn’t press _in_ , since they don’t have lube and there’s none in the Jeep. Which is, he’s realizing, an oversight he’s going to have to _correct_. But Liam doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, rocking back against the pressure with his mouth open and panting against the side of Brett’s neck, his fingers digging ever harder into Brett’s chest. Brett starts to stroke over his rim, matching his rhythm to that of Liam’s restlessly rocking hips. He starts grinding his own up to meet them.

Liam whines and twists and squirms against his chest, every bit of his movement dragging his clothed cock against Brett’s own, and then all at once he sits up, pressing himself up with his hands flat on Brett’s chest. Brett goes to take his hand back, momentarily concerned, but Liam just reaches back, lightning quick, and keeps it where it is.

“No,” he gasps. “Don’t—don’t stop.”

Brett doesn’t stop. But he’s sure as hell paying _attention_ as Liam drops his hands from Brett’s chest to his fly, and starts undoing the button and zip. He sucks in a sharp, harsh breath when Liam immediately splays the _V_ of his jeans wide, and reaches forward to _palm_ his covered cock. His hips buck. The movement drives Liam’s palm harder against his cock and then presses Liam’s hips harder back against Brett’s still-stroking fingers. They both moan.

“Just, just lift up slightly,” Liam requests breathlessly, and Brett gets what he’s going for. He braces his legs and lifts up just enough that Liam can slide his briefs down over the curve of his ass to the tops of his thighs, the waistband snugging up underneath his balls. He _hisses_ out a sound even as he’s finding himself absently grateful for the fact that his jeans are still covering his ass; Lori’s already going to want to kill him for this even without his bare ass touching the driver’s seat. 

“Christ,” he grits out, stroking his fingers a little _harder_ over Liam’s rim even as Liam is fumbling with his own jeans, trying to get them unbuttoned and unzipped.

“I can’t, I can’t think when you do that,” Liam protests, but that just causes Brett to _grin;_ he deliberately plants his feet and _tenses_ them, specifically for the way it bounces Liam on his thighs and sends Brett’s fingers _dragging_ across his rim. Liam bites off a whine and then lets loose a groan and tips forward so his forehead is resting on Brett’s shoulder as he finally manages to get his own jeans undone, and them and his briefs shoved down his own thighs.

They both _shudder_ when Liam gets their cocks aligned, and wraps one of his hands around them. 

“ _Christ,_ Liam,” Brett grits out, his free hand rising to wrap around Liam’s jaw—thumb on one side and the rest of his fingers curling around the opposite hinge—to push him slightly back, and hold him steady for a firm kiss. He deliberately bucks so that his cock drags against Liam’s, and then—as his hips are falling back down—his fingers drag against Liam’s rim.

“Ah,” Liam gasps, just this tiny puff of sound, and Brett groans against his mouth. He drops his hand around from Liam’s face to thread in between his back and arms, and then he _pushes_ back with his forearm, dragging Liam’s hands away from him. Liam makes a startled, protesting noise, his palms landing reflexively on Brett’s knees to steady himself.

Brett pulls his arm back and manages to get _his_ hand around both his and Liam’s cocks before Liam can recover. Liam gasps out a shaky moan, his head falling back as hips roll up into Brett’s grip, sliding against Brett’s cock against his, and then he jolts with a sharper cry when the movement _also_ sends Brett’s fingers still pressed up tight against his rim to dragging.

“Oh,” he gasps out, catching on to what Brett had wanted. “ _Oh._ ”

He keeps his hips rolling with his hands still braced back on Brett’s knees, Brett bracing his own thighs and thrusting up against him in turn, matching his rhythm. He’s barely paying attention to the way that the windows are all fogging up, or the fact that they are doing this all on the side of a very _public road,_ his mind too clouded with the way the entire Jeep cab has filled up with the scent of his and Liam’s combined arousal, the tips of both his and Liam’s cocks steadily leaking. He groans and strokes his grasping hand _up_ to gather some of that wetness, and then twists it around to stroke it back down. 

Liam cries out again and his fingertips clutching at Brett’s knees take on a hint of supernatural sharpness. Brett feels his own fangs pressing at his gums. He feels the alpha shift start to bleed into his own eyes, lighting up the cab with an almost-eerie tint of red as he buries his face against the side of Liam’s neck, and touches just the very _tips_ of his fangs to Liam’s skin.

Liam comes, immediately and without warning.

“Holy, holy fuck,” he whimpers, his hips still rocking up into Brett’s tight grip but the rhythm jerky now, uncoordinated. Brett brings the hand he’d had pressing against Liam’s rim up to wrap around Liam’s waist, dragging him in tighter against himself as he tightens his fingers around both Liam’s cock and his own, and strokes Liam through his orgasm even as he’s chasing his own.

It doesn’t take him long to find it.

He spends a good few seconds pressed up against Liam still sat aside his lap, his body rigid with tension as his cock twitches in his grip—Liam’s softening cock giving weaker twitches in turn—and then he sags bonelessly, helplessly back against his seat, his fingers loosening and falling to rest flat on Liam’s thigh instead. He concentrates on gulping in air, and eventually cracks a window when he comes back to himself enough to realize that the steamed-up interior, filled to the brim with the scent of him and Liam and _sex,_ isn’t exactly helping him come down. Liam slumps against him in turn, his whole _body_ still occasionally juddering with aftershocks.

Brett wraps the arm connected to his clean hand around his shoulders, and turns his face against the top of Liam’s head so that he’s breathing him in on every shaky inhale.

But finally they both manage to finish coming down, and Liam pushes himself back up on still-gratifyingly wobbly arms. He glances down at the mess in between them and makes a face.

“Um,” he says, darting a look back up at Brett. “Sorry?”

Brett just blows out an explosive breath that becomes half a laugh. “Shit,” he replies. “ _I’m_ not.”

Liam _grins_.

He also sacrifices the shirt he’s wearing for the sake of cleanup, and then reaches into the back—his once-more jeans covered ass hovering temptingly between his and Brett’s seats as he does—to swap it for a clean one from his bag. It doesn’t do much for the smell—or the odd wet spot that’d gotten on both of their jeans—but it’s better than nothing. Brett briefly contemplates whether he can legitimately send Lori on some kind of errand into town so that they’ll at least have a chance to rinse off and change before she gets a whiff of them, but then he gives the whole thing up as pointless, since, you know, _this is the car she’d end up driving_. He grimaces, already hearing the phantom sound of her indignant shrieking.

Liam finishes flopping back into his seat, his eyes wide and fixed a little blankly on the windshield. Finally he rolls his head over to look at Brett, and in _clearly_ trying not to smile, he winds up grinning all the wider.

“Well, uh,” he concludes. “That was quite the welcome. I feel very, um. Very welcomed.”

Brett _laughs,_ huge and helpless and belly-deep. He leans forward over his own thighs as he guffaws, and then gets the Jeep started while he’s down there.

\---

It takes Lori, _max,_ ten seconds to realize what Brett and Liam had gotten up to, once they step through the front door of the farmhouse. Her mouth drops open and she yells, “I have to _drive that car,_ you inconsiderate assholes!” as she starts pelting them with throw pillows that she retrieves from the couch.

“Ow!” Liam swears, as one of them manages to nail him right in the solar plexus. He curls inward around the center of himself to block the next one, but it doesn’t stop it from hitting him right in the meat of his upper arm, and on the _zipper_ side, no less. “ _Ouch_. I’m sorry! We’re sorry!”

Brett considers this, and then decides, “I’m not,” specifically for the way it makes Lori squawk in outrage and pelt _him_ with a pillow next. He blocks it easily, and unrepentantly, grinning all the while; he’d already made an appointment with the shop in town to get the Jeep detailed. Lori hurls one more pillow at him for good measure, but then she throws up her hands in disgust and storms away towards the kitchen. Liam glances wide-eyed up at him after she’s exited the room, looking especially frazzled since he’d caught one of the pillows in his arms and is now hugging it tightly to his chest. 

Brett just laughs, and hooks two fingers in his collar to drag him in for a kiss.

Liam runs upstairs to drop his stuff off in Brett’s room after Brett releases him. The last few times he’d visited the farmhouse they’d both had pretensions of him staying in one of the other free rooms, but he’d ended up spending so much time running back and forth between whatever room he’d chosen and Brett’s that eventually they’d both just given up and moved him into Brett’s room. Brett’s not entirely sure _why_ they’d been trying to pretend otherwise in the first place.

Except. 

Except he catches a glance at _Theo’s_ room as he picks his way towards the kitchen, and he exhales out a long, slow breath.

Lori’s in front of the sink, banging away at a set of dishes from lunch that they’d both uniformly decided _needed to soak._ She’s not so much cleaning them as flinging soap bubbles and her indignation everywhere, so Brett drapes himself over her back—ignoring her scalded-cat protest—and shows her the screen of his unlocked phone as he presses a smacking kiss to her cheek.

“It’s getting detailed on Monday,” he tells her, nodding to the appointment confirmation on the screen, “and you are free to hold this against me for the rest of time.”

Lori turns her head sideways and leans back slightly so that she can glower at him through narrow eyes. “I was going to do that _anyway,_ ” she assures him, but her scent is already starting to clear, a reluctant sort of amusement starting to thread through it. Still, she says, “I’m taking your car until it _does,_ then.”

Brett just fishes the keys to his sedan out of his pocket with his free, non-phone-holding hand, and dangles them over her other shoulder. Lori snatches them away from him with an unimpressed look.

That’s about the time that Liam makes it back downstairs, and into the kitchen. He’s got a hang-dog look on his face, and he’s wiping his palms on his thighs in a clear nervous gesture. He keeps looking at Brett as if for cues. Brett just grins, and lets Lori go when she nudges back against him so that she can step back, out from between him and the sink. He watches as she makes her way over to Liam, whose eyes go a little wide as his spine straightens up, clearly unsure what’s coming.

Lori just rolls her eyes, and yanks him into a tight hug. Liam practically sags against her, his arms coming up to wrap around her shoulders and his head turning so that he can press his face up some to her neck. The amusement in Brett’s chest transmutes into something else as he’s watching, as he sees Liam suck in a deep, lingering breath through his nose; he’d never been sure—he’s _still_ not sure—exactly how it works, Liam being Scott’s beta but switchpoint-connected to Brett’s pack—to _Brett_ and _Lori_ —through his and Brett’s connection, but he knows the line of Liam’s shoulders seems to get easier as he holds on to Lori, as he breathes her in. 

He feels the half-conscious swirl of contentment—of relief—that unfurls its way through Liam, the weaker echo of it doing the same through Brett, and has to close his eyes against it.

But soon enough Lori pushes Liam back, and punches him in the shoulder for good measure. Liam yelps and rubs at the offending spot with his opposite hand, his eyes wide and wounded on Lori’s face. 

Lori’s solution to _that_ is just plant one hand over _Liam’s_ face, and shove his puppy-dog-eyed expression bodily away.

“What were you two delinquents planning on doing tonight, anyway?” She wonders, glancing back at Brett.

Brett glances in turn at Liam, who—once he frees his face from Lori’s grasping fingers—glances right back. He gives a minute little shrug. 

“Movie?” Brett eventually suggests. It’s getting late, after all; Liam hadn’t been able to catch a flight out of LAX until after his last Friday class, and then he and Brett had had their, uh, _interlude_ on the side of the road on the way back from the airport.

Lori’s eyes light _up_ , which is how Brett knows he and Liam are screwed. “Oh, I have the _perfect_ one,” she promises, and flounces away towards the living room.

Liam stands in the archway into the kitchen, his jaw crooked sideways and his lips pursed in a thoughtful moue. “We deserve this,” he eventually decides. 

Brett just laughs, and snags Liam on his way to follow Lori into the living room to press him up against a wall and kiss him deep and lingering and thoroughly again. It isn’t until Lori rises up on her knees on the couch to pelt him in the back of the head with a retrieved throw pillow that he stops, Liam squinting one eye closed on a wince as the impact causes _his_ head to crack lightly against the wall in turn.

“We also deserved _that,_ ” he confides to Brett. 

Brett laughs again, low and quiet and under his breath. He drags Liam over to the couch.

They start out both sitting, but by the time the orchestral soundtrack is swelling its way to the climax of the _ridiculous_ rom-com Lori had chosen—which Brett is ninety-nine percent sure she has _zero_ actual interest in, beyond his and Liam’s torture—he’s laid out flat across the length of the couch, Liam on his chest. He’s also _asleep,_ as far as Brett can tell, his breath puffing easily and regularly against Brett’s neck. 

Lori glances over at him from her place on the armchair. Her eyes flicker down to Liam’s face, and her lips quirk softly. “That exhaustion his classes’ fault or _yours?_ ” She wonders, tongue firmly in her cheek.

Brett flips her off with the one hand he manages to free without overly-jostling Liam. Lori laughs—though she keeps it quiet—and reaches forward for the remote to pause the movie. 

“Go,” she tells him, waving a dismissive hand in his and Liam’s direction. “You’re free, sentence served.”

“Thanks,” Brett murmurs. 

Lori waves dismissively again and fixes her eyes back to the TV as she starts navigating back to the streaming app’s home page, looking for something else to watch. Brett watches her for a second, and then drops his gaze down to Liam, the hand he’d used to flip her off rising to smooth Liam’s riotous hair back away from his face. Liam’s nose wrinkles, and his eyelids blink slowly open. 

“Hey,” Brett greets softly, his fingers now cupping the side of Liam’s jaw and his thumb stroking over the curve of Liam’s cheekbone. Something complicated happens in his chest when Liam _immediately_ and unconsciously presses into it, seeking it out. Brett curls over to press his forehead to Liam’s, and then skims his nose over Liam’s brow to the top of his head as he murmurs, “What say we get you in an actual bed?”

Liam mumbles something incomprehensible, but he doesn’t fight it when Brett shifts him up to sitting, and he follows when Brett tugs him to his feet. 

He _is_ clearly exhausted, though, and Brett finds himself frowning down at the top of Liam’s head as he shepherds Liam through getting ready for bed. Worry bites at him, but when he—still inexpertly, admittedly—stretches mental fingers out to probe at that awareness of Liam that lives tucked up at the base of his skull, he doesn’t find anxiety, or restlessness, or whatever. 

He finds the _opposite:_ something gone tight in Liam unwinding more and more with every breath Liam takes; with every time he leans back into Brett’s hands gently guiding him out of his street clothes, and into sweats, or into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

 _He seem a little high-strung to you, lately?_ Brett had asked Theo a few weeks into Liam’s first semester at UCLA. Theo had been stood in front of the counter in the farmhouse kitchen, bleary-eyed and dropping spoonfuls of sugar into the coffee he’d poured himself from the pot Brett had brewed.

Purposefully or not, he’d selected the mug that Liam had used when he’d been at the farmhouse the week before.

 _I’d be more concerned if he_ wasn’t _high-strung,_ Theo had countered, unconcerned. Brett had frowned at him, so Theo had explained, _Think about it. He’s on a campus of 45,000 people, away from all but two of his pack—from his_ alpha _—and,_ Theo had pointed out, his eyes shrewd on Brett’s face, _he’s away from_ you, _and Lori, and all this._

He’d waved a hand vaguely at the base of his own skull.

 _This thing doesn’t seem to like distance,_ he’d concluded, and had gone back to focusing on stirring his sugar into his coffee.

Brett had kept right on frowning at the back of Theo’s head. _He’s away from_ you _, too,_ he’d pointed out. Theo had just shrugged, and hadn’t responded.

Exhaling out slow and long and quietly, Brett presses himself up a little closer to Liam’s back. He fits an arm snugly around Liam’s waist when Liam makes a soft, involuntary noise and leans back into him.

Liam falls back asleep almost the second that they climb into bed. Brett goes out almost as fast, Liam curled into the curve of his body and his ears fixed on the sound of Lori’s heartbeat in the living room below, her quiet laughter at whatever she’s watching, the electronic _hum_ of it forming a soothing set of background noise as Brett pulls Liam a little more firmly back against himself, and closes his eyes.

He wakes up precisely _once_ in the middle of the night, because he’s absolutely _sure_ that he hears keys in the lock, and then the front door open. But when his senses arrow out—still muddled and sleep-slow, made soft-edged by Liam’s heat bundled up so close to him—he doesn’t smell anything he doesn’t recognize, and the heartbeat pounds out a familiar rhythm. _Lori must have run outside to get something,_ he concludes muzzily, and buries his face back into the back of Liam’s neck, already most of the way back to being asleep.

Which is why is comes as such a complete shock to him to come back downstairs the next morning—looking for a cup of coffee to try and lure Liam out of bed with—and finds Theo sitting at the kitchen table, casually drinking his own cup of coffee and occasionally exchanging short snatches of conversation with Lori. 

He startles and jerks to look wide-eyed up at Brett when Brett all but trips over his own feet upon spotting him, though his expression almost immediately melts into one of confusion. “Uh. Hi, Brett,” he greets slowly, shooting Lori a look like he’s going to be able to buy a clue from her.

“You asshole,” Brett accuses, once he’s recovered. “You told Liam and me that you weren’t going to be able to make it.”

Theo shrugs, unconcerned. “Guy we were after literally got himself picked up on a DUI last night. Argent and Agent McCall are on the way to the arresting jurisdiction to extradite him back to Beacon Hills.”

Brett’s about to open his mouth to keep interrogating him when he’s interrupted by an absolute _blast_ of noise as someone thunders down the steps from the second to the first floor. Liam appears rapidly in his peripheral vision and then skids to a stop, using the side of the archway from the living room into the kitchen as a brake as he stares at Theo. “You _prick!_ ” He shouts once he has, which Brett finds immensely gratifying. 

Theo throws up his hands. “It’s not like I _snuck into the house,_ ” he gripes. “I used the _front door._ I unlocked it using a _key_.”

So _that’s_ what Brett had heard last night. _Whoops,_ he thinks. Out-loud he just points out, “You could have woken us up.”

“It was three o’clock in the morning,” Theo counters, proverbial heels digging in.

Off to the side, Lori is watching all of this with an unimpressed expression and judgement in her heart. She glances back and forth between the three of them, and then declares, “You three are an _embarrassment_ to the species,” but she’s probably still just mad about Brett and Liam hooking up in her Jeep. 

Brett makes a face at her. Lori makes one right back.

But the flash-fire of Liam’s irritation seems to have already burned itself out: he comes off the wall and practically _crashes_ into Theo still sitting at the table. Theo whips out a hand to grab the underside of it as the chair he’s sitting in starts to overbalance, but even as he’s yanking the chair back flat his free arm is coming up to wrap around Liam’s waist, and hold Liam to him as Liam settles into his lap, his hands on either side of Theo’s face as Liam kisses him. 

“ _Ugh,_ ” Lori complains, giving an exaggerated gag. 

She retrieves her coffee from the counter and then makes to exit the kitchen, though she catches Brett’s wrist on the way past him and gives it a squeeze, her lips quirking. Brett’s quirk right back. He twists his wrist to get his fingers around her own and squeeze them back in a silent _thanks_. 

Liam’s still in Theo’s lap when Brett turns back to them, but he’d apparently given up on kissing Theo in favor of burying his face in the side of Theo’s neck. Theo has his face turned against the side of Liam’s head, his nose positioned just behind Liam’s ear. His eyes flick up to meet Brett’s when he senses Brett’s attention.

Brett’s mouth curls up into a soft smile. Theo’s does the same; an echo. 

They all hang out in the kitchen for a little longer—Brett swooping in for his own kiss, unapologetic about the way that he cranks Theo’s neck back so that he can claim it even with the way Liam is still sitting astride his lap—but eventually Theo declares his need for a shower.

“Wouldn’t hurt for you to take one too,” he points out, flicking a finger between Liam’s eyes. His nostrils flare tellingly, which means he can still smell what Liam and Brett had gotten up to yesterday. 

Brett just grins, watching all this. “Sure you aren’t just jealous?” He wonders. Theo rolls his eyes.

Liam _visibly_ considers trying to join Theo in his shower, but Theo swears up and down that he’s just rinsing off, so finally—looking a little put out about it, honestly—Liam slinks upstairs to go use Brett’s shower, while Theo uses the one in the hallway bathroom on the first floor. Brett figures that if Theo really _is_ planning on being that in-and-out, then he’ll be out long before Liam—who tends to linger—and so after a moment’s debate he heads for the hallway bathroom and slips inside when, as expected, he finds it unlocked.

Theo hadn’t been kidding, apparently: he’s already shutting off the water and stepping out of the shower stall, towel in hand as he quickly dries off, when Brett opens the door. He raises an eyebrow, but _he’s_ the one who’d left it unlocked, so Brett just raises one right back and swings the door back shut behind himself. Theo just snorts a quiet laugh and finishes scrubbing himself dry with one hand, his other already reaching for the pile of clean clothes he’d left on the counter.

Brett gives _serious_ thought to stopping him. To pressing himself up against Theo’s naked chest, and walking him back against the glass of the shower stall, and maybe getting a hand around Theo’s currently-soft cock; Brett knows he could get Theo to harden up quickly. He could go to his _knees_ , then, even, and see what kind of noises he could pull from Theo with his mouth. 

But as tempting a sequence of events as it is, he lets it go. He waits until Theo has gotten dressed, and has gotten himself positioned in front of the counter as he focuses more completely on toweling off his hair, to step forward, and press himself up against Theo’s back. Theo _instantly_ leans back into him; Brett feels his eyes helplessly flare as he turns his face against the join of Theo’s neck, and shoulder.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Brett tells him, his voice _aching_ a little with sincerity. His whole _body_ aching with it, really, from the steadily-unwinding tightness at the base of his spine to the thrumming _awareness_ that lives at the base of his _skull,_ the sense of it slowly relaxing like a cramp coming loose; Lori and Liam and Theo all under one roof. 

_His_ roof.

Theo just turns his face against the side of Brett’s own and _grins;_ Brett can feel it. He murmurs, “You say that _now_. Give it a few hours for the full chaos to really kick in, and the surprise of me showing up might not be so welcome.”

And he’s joking. Brett _knows_ he’s joking. Teasing, picking at Brett’s edges because it amuses him, and also because Brett usually gives as good as he gets. 

But he’s also _not_ joking. Brett knows _that,_ too.

He gets a hand on Theo’s arm, and flips him around against the counter so that they’re chest-to-chest instead, his hands dropping to land on either side of Theo’s hips; caging him in. He searches Theo’s face, Theo’s expression having spasmed some and then tightened right back up.

Caught.

“I know,” Brett tells him, low and quiet and meant just for the space between the two of them, “that you can’t just _turn off_ every bad habit you’ve spent your life accumulating, but can you at least do us the favor of _pretending_ that you’re trying to trust how we feel about you?”

Theo’s expression cracks at the edges. He breathes out, “Brett…,” half a protest and half—something else. He doesn’t finish the sentence, his eyes just falling down away from Brett’s own and his throat bobbing. Brett just exhales out roughly, and presses his forehead to Theo’s temple.

Theo doesn’t apologize, not that Brett was really expecting him to. Not that he’d really _wanted_ him to. He tips his head forward against Theo’s own so that he can press a gentle kiss to the corner of Theo’s mouth, then his lips when Theo immediately turns into it. 

Theo leaves him to his own shower. When Brett comes out he and Liam are back in the living room, sprawled out on either side of the couch but with their legs tangled in the middle. Liam’s hair is wet. 

Theo’s _bracelet_ is back around his wrist, tied tight with the leather straps Theo had punched through the width of it to hold it closed after Argent had gotten Deaton to remove the magic that had previously done so.

Brett studies them for a few seconds, and then he makes an executive decision. Liam has homework to do—including for his latest PoliSci class for his new minor—and Theo’s just flat-out exhausted from his work with Argent, so Brett leaves them in the living room and goes to pick up lunch from in town.

When he gets back, he finds that their positions have shifted: Liam is still on one end of the couch, but he’d stretched his legs out onto the coffee table so that could balance his laptop on his thighs, and Theo is laying against his hip, his head propped up on a pillow he’d set against Liam’s side. Theo’s fast asleep. Liam glances up at Brett and smiles as he comes through the door, the corners of his eyes crinkling and one hand falling reflexively or not to thread through Theo’s hair.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Brett whispers back.

He ends up unpacking the sandwiches he’d gotten from the deli in town right there in the living room, Theo’s left in the bag but Liam’s handed over to him—and Lori coming in to retrieve hers before she deliberately and _quickly_ vacates the room again—with Brett sitting cross-legged at his feet. Liam had made noise about making room for him on the couch but it would one-hundred percent have involved moving Theo, and Brett had taken one look at Theo’s sleep-slack face and decided against it. He leans back a little harder against the side of one of Liam’s legs, and is perfectly content. 

They wind up turning on one of the college lacrosse games, the volume left off. It’s something of a strategic error because there’s no _way_ either of them are going to be able to resist commentating and they _don’t_ : Theo wakes up in the middle of both of them yelling in outrage at a patently absurd play from one of the teams. He groans, takes one look at the screen to see what they’re both so upset about, and then huffs in irritation and yanks the pillow out from behind his head to crush it down over his face, like he could smother all knowledge of lacrosse out of himself with it.

Liam just ends up stealing and hitting him with it for good measure, before tossing it away to the side. “You should eat something,” he points out, once he has. Theo just hums absently, already halfway back to asleep, and settles a little more firmly against Liam’s thigh.

Liam looks down at Brett, who looks up at him and then shrugs. “Rutgers is playing Penn at two,” he points out quietly. Liam’s lips quirk; he nods.

He also goes back to doing his homework, splitting his attention between that and the screen. Every now and then when he takes a break from typing he’ll drop his hand absently to the top of Brett’s head, and comb his fingers back through Brett’s hair; Brett feels his eyelashes flutter at the sensation every time, his head falling back against the edge of the couch.

But eventually Theo wakes up for good, and he wakes up _ravenous._ He practically _inhales_ his sandwich when Brett points to it, and even disappears into the kitchen at one point before reappearing with a bag of chips that he _also_ quickly decimates. Liam exchanges an incredulous look with Brett.

“What?” He asks. “Is Argent not feeding you?”

Theo just glares. “I _drove all night_ to get here, assholes,” he tells them. “Next time I’ll stop and eat a five-course meal.”

Brett experiences something that feels a lot like guilt go falling down his throat into his gut like a stone. Liam’s expression just spasms, but he at least seems to have some idea of what to do with his sudden overabundance of unexpected feelings: he surges forward and tackles Theo to the couch, hiding his face in Theo’s neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, which probably means that he’d overheard Brett’s comment to Theo in the bathroom earlier. Theo’s expression does something complicated before he manages to smooth it out, and switch from staring at the top of Liam’s head to staring dryly up at the ceiling.

Still, his arms come around Liam’s back, holding Liam to him. He shoots Brett a thoughtful look over the curve of Liam’s shoulder.

The moment passes after a minute or so. Theo rolls over and dumps Liam off of himself, almost _undoubtedly_ for the way that it makes Liam squawk and flail as he falls to the floor, and then he sits up. He spreads his arms over the back of the couch.

“I have been,” he declares, “cooped up in various cars on stakeouts for like a week now.”

Brett gets what he’s angling for. He tips his head thoughtfully in Liam’s direction. “Pick up lacrosse game?” He suggests, ignoring Theo’s exaggerated groan.

Liam’s eyes light up.

He drags Theo outside while Brett hollers up to Lori still in her room, the two of them conducting a shouted negotiation over what exactly Brett’s willing to trade for Lori’s participation in this venture. Eventually she comes down when he promises to take dish duty for the next two weeks, and the two head out back of the farmhouse and down off the patio to find Liam and Theo already in the grass below, a pile of lacrosse gear at their feet; Liam had clearly remembered where to find the stash. Brett opens his mouth to suggest that he pair up with Theo, Lori with Liam, when Lori speaks up.

“Me and Theo versus you two,” she declares, scooping up two lacrosse sticks and throwing one to Theo. Brett stares at her back, baffled; not to toot his and Liam’s collective horns, but they’re two of the best players in the _state_. Lori’s not bad, and Brett’s never actually seen Theo play, but the breakdown still seems wildly unbalanced.

But: “Okay,” he agrees blankly, shrugging in the face of Liam’s equally obvious confusion.

But Lori’s reasoning becomes clear soon enough, because it turns out that Theo? _Plays dirty._

It’s clear he knows the rules but that seems to be solely so that he can come right up to the edge of breaking them. He doesn’t so much try to _win_ in the traditional sense as to keep _Brett_ and _Liam_ from winning, and all while opening up all kinds of opportunities for Lori to swoop in and reclaim the ball, and send it rocketing towards the ‘goal’—a bush and a tree set decently close together for their purposes—while they’re distracted.

“What the hell is even happening,” Liam wonders baffedly a half-hour in, he and Brett actually _down_ several points and with no clear path to making the difference up. Across the grass, Theo just smirks—Lori hanging over his back as she hollers a victorious war-cry at their most recent goal—and spreads his arms wide in challenge.

“We’ve been conned,” Brett just mutters to him, and goes to get back in the game.

They go until it starts getting dark—the winter days still short—and then call it when they’d actually have to flare their eyes to keep going. Brett and Liam had actually managed to claw back some of the difference in points, but they still lose: Brett’s never going to live this down, he realizes, meeting Lori’s triumphant grin with a dry look of his own.

Still, he and Liam get a little of their own back when Liam just flat-out tackles Theo to the ground and attempts—only partially successfully—to grind his face into the dirt in revenge.

Brett rolls his eyes and leaves them to it, looking to Lori as he asks, “What do you think, Methi’s?”

“Ooh,” Lori agrees, right over the sound of Liam’s and Theo’s continued squabbling. “Get samosas. And I want mango lassi!” She yells at his retreating back, as he heads inside to go place their order.

Delivery to the farmhouse takes a decent slice of time, but Brett tends to tip the full value of his and Lori’s orders so the owners of the Indian place on main tend not to mind sending their longsuffering son out to make the trek. Brett orders enough chicken tikka masala and lamb vinndaloo and vegetable samosas to practically buy the place out, and only at the last moment remembers to order Lori’s mango lassi because she literally shrieks it at him from the backyard, where she’d clearly overheard him forget. He hangs up after forking over his credit card details, and is just sliding his phone back into his pocket as Lori, Liam, and Theo come thundering back up the patio stairs, and through the backdoor.

“It’ll be a bit,” Brett tells them, because they’re all clearly starving.

Liam groans in exaggerated despair, but he follows Lori into the living room easily enough when she elbows him and asks if he’d seen the latest season of the show Liam had gotten her hooked on during that admittedly very awful forty-eight hours back in Devenford, right after Theo had been attacked. Liam _hasn’t_ seen the latest season, distracted as he’d been with classes, so they all settle in—Brett actually the only one lost, because apparently _Theo_ is addicted, too—to watch. They keep going even once the food has arrived, passing containers back and forth and Liam eventually haranguing Lori into splitting her mango lassi with him after he tries and then immediately falls in love with it.

But a few episodes in, and with most of the containers emptied, Lori climbs to her feet and then stretches up, onto the very tips of her toes with her arms over her head. She drops back down flat on her feet, and then bends over the back of the couch to press her lips to the top of Brett’s head in a kiss. 

“I,” she declares, “am getting the hell out of dodge, and going to Anna’s for the night.” She uses the hands she’d set on either side of Brett’s face to tip it further back, so that they’re looking directly at each other as she warns him, “If you three do to this couch what _you two—_ ” she gestures vaguely between him and Liam, “—did to my Jeep, I will murder you all.”

Brett just squints shrewdly up at her. “Does that mean we can do it to the armchair without consequences?” He wonders innocently; Lori squawks and smacks him on the shoulder.

She also leaves with a sing-songed _byeee_ less than five minutes later. Liam and Theo hadn’t moved from their places on the floor and the other end of the couch, respectively, so it isn’t hard for Theo to roll his head across the back of the cushions and ask, “What the hell did you two do to her Jeep?”

Stretched out on the floor in front of the couch with a pillow behind his head, Liam’s face _flames_. Brett, though—Brett just smirks, molasses slow, and tells Theo, “It’d probably be easier to _show_ you.”

He hooks a finger in one of Theo’s belt loops. He tugs, encouraging him over, _over,_ until Theo gives up with a roll of his eyes and follows the guiding pressure of Brett’s hand until he’s sitting astride Brett’s thighs, his knees on either side of Brett’s hips. On the floor below, Liam has flipped over onto his stomach and is watching them with wide eyes.

Brett grins at him, and then deliberately palms Theo’s lower back until he can start sliding one hand down, _down,_ until it’s brushing the waistband of his jeans, his briefs. “You see,” he tells Theo, “it started when Liam couldn’t wait—”

“ _I_ couldn’t wait?” Liam squawks, outraged.

“—and so we pulled over to the side of the road, and I got him like this.”

Brett’s fingers are dipping _inside_ Theo’s briefs, now, skating across the skin of his lower back and lower until he’s _just_ teasing at the crack of Theo’s ass. Theo’s breaths are coming faster now against Brett’s chest, his back arching just slightly to press back into Brett’s questing fingers.

Brett _grins,_ and dips them down the rest of the way until they’re brushing his rim. Theo bites back a moan, but instead of falling into Brett’s chest like Liam had, he pushes himself further _away,_ against Brett’s fingers. 

“Yeah?” He goads breathlessly. “I _doubt_ that was it.”

“Oh,” Brett assures him, _stroking_ his fingers now and feeling _satisfaction_ surge through him, hard and fast, when Theo shudders, “it _wasn’t_.”

He drops his other hand to Theo’s fly, fully intending to get it open, and then get Theo’s cock—and then his own—out. He is _one-hundred percent_ ready to recreate his and Liam’s adventure yesterday. But hands come down over his own, and they aren’t Theo’s.

“Not, not that this isn’t like, the _hottest_ thing I’ve ever seen,” Liam all but whimpers, his chin on Theo’s shoulder and his arms on either side of Theo’s hips, “but Lori really _will_ kill us.”

Brett groans, frustrated, but Liam’s right. Pulling his hand out of Theo’s briefs and away from his cock—Theo biting off a high, sharp protest—Brett gets his hands on Theo’s hips, and pushes him back. He holds him steady as Theo gets his feet back underneath himself—and Liam behind him does the same—and then he turns first Theo, and then Liam, towards the stairs.

Liam still somehow manages to beat them all into Brett’s room. Theo doesn’t actually seem to mind; he gets his hands anchored around Liam’s face and starts kissing him, tongue _clearly_ stroking deep, as he starts walking Liam step by step back until the back of Liam’s knees hit Brett’s mattress. Instead of sitting, though, like Brett would have expected, Liam bends his knees and gets them up on the bedspread so that he’s kneeling instead, his hands clutching at Theo’s face in turn. Brett leaves them to it for the moment and turns to get the door shut.

By the time he turns back, Theo’s already gotten Liam out of his shirt, and Liam’s working on his. Brett steps forward to help, yanking it the rest of the way over Theo’s head and then catching his mouth once it’s gone, Theo leaning back into him. Almost immediately he _jolts,_ though, Brett swallowing the moan he gives, and Brett glances curiously down to see that Liam has gotten Theo’s jeans open, and them and Theo’s briefs shoved down to the middle of Theo’s thighs. 

Brett feels his eyes narrow with anticipation: he has some idea where Liam is going with this.

“It was, it was like this,” Liam is telling Theo breathlessly as he gets his own jeans open, and them and his own briefs pulled down out of the way so that he can press himself up to Theo’s chest, the jut of both of their hard cocks aligning. Liam bites off a whine at the sensation, but then manages, “And then, and then _Brett—_ ”

Brett doesn’t give him a chance to finish. He reaches forward, sliding one hand in between their bodies to wrap it around both of them. Theo _bucks_ on a surprised, sharp cry. Liam does exactly what he did to Brett yesterday and melts a little against Theo’s chest. 

“Fuck, fuck,” he whimpers, his hips rolling to send his cock sliding through Brett’s fist and smoothly _dragging_ against Theo’s own.

“ _Jesus,_ ” is Theo’s contribution, his head falling back onto Brett’s shoulder.

“And that wasn’t even the extent of it,” Brett reminds him silkily. With his free hand, he finds one of Liam’s wrists, and drags it back around to Theo’s back. Liam catches on almost immediately and flattens his palm against Theo’s skin, sliding it down, _down,_ until his fingers are dipping between Theo’s ass to brush against his rim, just like Brett’s had been earlier. Just like Brett’s had been to _Liam’s_ rim last night.

“And you two,” Theo pants out, “were doing this all on the side of a _road?_ How the hell did you not get _arrested?_ ”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Brett demurs, grinning against his ear as he tightens his fist around Theo’s and Liam’s cocks, and starts to pump it in time with Liam’s rolling hips, with Theo’s helplessly jerking ones. He can feel the way Liam is dragging his fingers over Theo’s rim by the movement of the back of Liam’s knuckles against his stomach.

But just as Theo is starting to twitch against Liam in Brett’s grip, Liam suddenly gasps out, “I, I want,” and pulls back some. Brett opens his fingers to let him go, though Theo groans at the loss of both Brett’s hand _and_ Liam’s, which slides away from him.

Brett just hooks his chin over Theo’s shoulder, and looks down at Liam, curious. Liam just rolls over onto his back to finish wrestling his pants and briefs off his legs, and then grins at him as he flips back over onto his stomach, and drops flat. 

It puts his mouth level with Theo’s cock. Theo _moans_ as he realizes.

“Looks like somebody else is pretty lucky, too,” Brett murmurs to him, one hand rising to cup over the front of Theo’s jaw, the other dropping to hold his cock steady for Liam as Liam leans forward, and takes Theo into his mouth. Almost immediately Brett flattens his palm on Theo’s stomach, holding him firmly against his own body as Theo’s hips try to give a helpless thrust.

Liam would have been able to roll with it—maybe even had been _angling_ for it—but Theo’s frustrated groan is worth it. Brett grins against the side of his face, and then _bites_ at his jaw. 

“Why are you still fucking _dressed?_ ” Theo swears at him. His fingers tangle in the hem of Brett’s shirt like it’s personally offending him.

Brett hums. “This seems like a trap,” he points out: if he stepped away to yank his shirt over his head, shove his jeans over his hips, it’d give Theo the chance to move. 

Theo just turns his own face against Brett’s and _smirks_. “You want to stay trapped in your jeans all night, I guess that’s your loss,” he retorts, but almost immediately afterwards he has to gasp and bow a little forward as Liam does _something_ with his mouth _,_ and something apparently pretty good.

Brett grins, and leaves him in Liam’s capable hands for the moment to step back, and do as he’d envisioned: he yanks his shirt over his head; he gets his jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, and shoves them and his briefs over his hips. When he steps back up to Theo’s back, they’re skin-to-skin everywhere they touch.

Theo groans, and leans back into him, one palm turning out to clutch at one of Brett’s thighs, his other hand now buried in Liam’s hair.

Liam’s head is bobbing, and his hips are working in tiny little circles against the bedspread, but even Brett can tell the angle’s wrong. Liam flicks his eyes up to Brett’s and Brett grins at him, then jerks his chin a little. Liam’s eyes widen but then he nods best he can with his mouthful.

Brett steps back—Liam pulling back at the same time—and gets Theo spun around even as Theo is biting off a complaint. Once there, he shoves Theo down so that he’s sitting on the edge of the mattress. Theo just barely manages to catch himself on his palms, his brow furrowing with irritation. 

But it falls away from his face pretty fast when Liam scrambles off the bed, and goes to his knees in front of him instead. Liam reaches forward and hooks his fingers in Theo’s jeans and briefs still trapped around his thighs, and gets them slid the rest of the way down, and off, and that’s about as much ceremony as Theo gets before Liam is leaning back forward, and taking Theo back into his mouth. 

Theo gives up on being braced on his palms, then, and lets himself fall back flat, both his hands coming up to cradle the back of Liam’s head as he moans. 

But that just gives Brett all kinds of ideas, and he moves forward—skating his fingers appreciatively across Liam’s shoulders as he goes—to climb up onto the bed beside Theo. Theo’s eyes immediately snap open and he turns to look at him, and it only takes him an _instant_ of studying Brett to apparently decide what he wants. He jerks his chin pointedly sideways, a clear _come here_ gesture. 

Brett smirks, and goes.

But he also smooths a hand back over Theo’s forehead, pushing some of his sweaty hair out of his face, as he kneels right at Theo’s side. “You sure?” He checks.

Theo just glares at him a little, and lifts a hand from Liam’s head to get a hold of Brett’s hip, and _pull_ him sideways. Brett goes where he’s being led with a smirk, settling with one knee on either side of Theo’s shoulders. He slides a hand back into Theo’s hair and _clutches_ it there, his other hand taking hold of his admittedly neglected cock and angling it down, towards Theo’s mouth.

Theo lifts up his head to meet it, opening his lips wide to take it. His eyelashes flutter a little as his tongue presses up against the underside of Brett’s cock, and that’s it: _Brett_ moans, his head falling back.

He keeps his fingers in Theo’s hair to help bear some of the weight of his head as Theo starts to move the best he can with the angle. He can’t take Brett all that deep but he makes up for it with his lips, and tongue: closing the seal of the former _tight_ around Brett and sucking, and swirling the latter around the tip, pressing _up_ so that Brett’s cock drags against the roof of Theo’s mouth.

“Jesus _christ,_ ” Brett groans, and starts to shallowly thrust to meet Theo’s bobbing head.

The beginnings of an orgasm start swirling around the base of his spine. He starts to consider whether he’d be okay with that—with coming just like this, Theo’s face between his legs and Brett’s hand in his hair—when he chances a look backwards just in time to see Liam glance up at him, _his_ mouth still wrapped around Theo’s cock. Liam’s eyes narrow, slightly. His head tilts, just a bit. 

Brett _grins._

“Wait, what the _fu—_ ” Theo starts to complain, as both Brett and Liam pull back from him. It only takes him a second of glancing up at Brett’s face for him to realize what’s happening. “I hate you both,” he declares, groaning; his hips—Liam’s fingers wrapped tightly around the base of his cock—helplessly bucking.

“Sure you do,” Brett replies easily, and ducks down to kiss him before swinging one leg up and over him, so that he can settle at Theo’s side instead, his back against the bed’s headboard. Liam sits back at the same time, and starts encouraging Theo over onto his stomach with pushy hands at his waist. 

Theo glares half-heartedly down at him, but he goes. He glances up at Brett once he’s there, his head as a consequence now in Brett’s lap, next to Brett’s still-hard cock. His eyes narrow slightly, calculating. Brett grins right back down at him, challenging.

Theo rises up, and swallows him back down. This time he isn’t limited by the angle, and he’s also got something to _prove;_ Brett momentarily thinks that he might have overplayed his hand, here, his eyes rolling up some in his skull as his mouth opens on a soundless gasp. He drops one hand to the back of Theo’s head just for the _anchor,_ and slaps his other hand out sideways, looking for his nightstand.

He hits it harder than he’d meant to, everything on top jangling a little with the impact. Brett just ignores that and tangles his fingers in the handle of the attached drawer so that he can yank it out, and dip his hand inside to retrieve the lube stashed there. He fishes it out just as Theo does something complicated and _mind-blowing_ with his tongue, and nearly closes his fingertips in the drawer as he goes to slam it back shut.

Liam’s grinning at him when Brett manages to open his eyes back up, and focus on him. He clearly thinks Brett’s overplayed his hand, too. 

Brett just smirks, cock-sure and _determined,_ and tosses him the lube. His fingers tighten in Theo’s hair. 

Liam just shakes his head slightly, clearly amused, and uncaps the bottle. Brett leans back harder against the headboard, and watches him through hooded eyes as Liam drizzles a healthy dose of lube over the first three fingers of his right hand, and then reaches down to run the set of them between the crack of Theo’s ass, over his rim.

Theo pulls off of Brett’s cock with a sharp cry, and buries his face in the join of Brett’s hip and thigh, his hips bucking restlessly against the bedspread below him. 

“Okay?” Liam asks him quietly, and Brett can’t help the way his lips flicker softly. He flicks his own eyes down just in time to catch the look that chases itself across Theo’s face as he rises up just slightly to look back at Liam, before he gives a single, short nod. Liam grins at him, softer this time, and nods back.

He also gets to _work_ , first with one slick finger, and then quickly moving on to two. Theo presses back into it, Liam’s fingers dipping in and out of his ass in time with Theo’s rolling hips, his shaky exhales. Brett strokes one hand between Theo’s shoulder blades in a soothing rub, unconcerned with his own hard cock still held loosely in one of Theo’s hands and still damp from Theo’s mouth. 

But soon enough Theo seems to come back to himself some, and he shudders out a breath, and looks back up at Brett. The challenge comes back into his eyes. Brett _grins_ down at him. 

Theo smirks back, and rises up to swallow Brett back down again. 

His lips meet his fingers resting flat on Brett’s stomach almost immediately. He keeps his head there, _low,_ and works his tongue along the underside, firm and massaging. Brett groans and resists the urge to squirm, the hand he’d had on Theo’s back digging _in_ , now, and his fingers in Theo’s hair tightening.

Still, he can tell when Liam adds a third finger because Theo has to pull off again, a sharp cry spilling from his lips. He buries his face in Brett’s thigh once more, rocking back against the stretch of Liam’s fingers and gasping out, “ _Liam._ ”

“Yeah, Theo,” Liam replies instantly, his free hand rising to stroke along his back, and briefly high enough that Liam can tangle his fingers with Brett’s between Theo’s shoulder blades. Liam looks up at Brett once they have, and grins. Brett grins back, and gives his fingers a squeeze.

Liam takes his hand back, and _presses_ it down on Theo’s lower back, arching it further. Theo sucks in a sharp breath and then shudders the same one back out—the skate of it against his inner thigh nearly sending _Brett_ shuddering—and angles his hips back even _more_. 

Liam’s the one who sucks in a sharp breath this time. He loses the rhythm of his pumping fingers for a good few seconds before he manages to find it again.

Theo doesn’t go back to trying to win his and Brett’s unspoken bet; can’t seem to. He keeps his face buried in the join of Brett’s thigh and hip and just rocks back against Liam’s fingers, the noises he can’t seem to stop himself from letting out muffled against Brett’s skin. For a moment Brett considers winding his fingers in Theo’s hair, and forcing his head _up_ —forcing those noises out, into the air between all three of them—but instead he just cups his palm around the back of Theo’s skull, and strokes his thumb over the sensitive skin behind one of Theo’s ears.

Theo shivers, and presses his face harder against Brett’s thigh.

But that’s about the time that Liam must decide Theo’s ready, because it’s not that long after that Theo’s whole _body_ jerks, rocking backwards as he apparently tries to follow Liam’s fingers as Liam withdraws them. Liam uses that same hand he’d still had braced against Theo’s lower back to soothe him—Theo arching immediately back into _that_ touch, too—and then he removes it to start digging around the sheets for the lube bottle, which had disappeared—somewhere.

It’s disappeared into the dip in the mattress by Brett’s right foot: he kicks it lightly to indicate its position, and then—while Liam is snagging the bottle and getting it popped open—Brett gets his hands underneath Theo’s shoulders and _hauls_ him up, keeping him there as he presses his mouth to Theo’s in the few seconds it takes Theo to switch mental tracks, and get his hands set against either of Brett’s hipbones so that his arms can hold him up. He moans into Brett’s mouth.

And then he bites off a sharp cry and all but _collapses_ against Brett’s chest, and Brett looks down the length of his spine to see the cause: Liam slowly pushing inside him, one hand once more braced against Theo’s lower back and the other wrapped around one of Theo’s hips.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ ” Theo gasps out against Brett’s collarbone, his fingers clutching at Brett’s hip, his thigh where one of his hands had fallen down. Brett leans over to kiss him again, one of his own hands rising to cup the side of Theo’s face, and he’s more than a little gratified when Theo immediately presses up into it.

But he has to break away when Liam starts to _move._

Brett drops the hand he’d had on Theo’s face down to his shoulders, holding him against his chest as Liam’s thrusts start to rock him steadily forward and back. Theo keeps trying to bite off his moans, and groans, but all it’s doing it turning them into higher-pitched whimpers, and _whines_ , and Brett can’t stop himself from shifting against the bed, his own cock twitching as he listens; as Liam drives Theo harder against _Brett’s_ body with every circle of his hips.

But that just seems to give Theo ideas: his gaze flicks up to meet Brett’s, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully no matter that his mouth is panting open, and wet, and all at once he sits up some— _Liam_ crying out at the sudden change in position—and then he leans down, one forearm barred against Brett’s lower stomach, and takes Brett’s cock back in his mouth.

Brett absently clocks the reason for the bracing forearm even as his mouth is falling open on a sharp, soundless cry; it’s not to keep Brett’s hips from bucking up, though they do, but instead to keep Liam’s thrusts from sending Theo too far down on Brett’s cock so that he doesn’t choke. Brett would admire the efficiency of it if he was, in fact, capable of thinking about anything beyond the sudden wet heat and tight suction of Theo’s mouth.

“Jesus _christ,_ ” he barely manages to rasp out, both his hands falling to either side of Theo’s head to hold on as his knees come up on either side of Theo’s shoulders, his feet now flat to brace _himself_ against the combined onslaught of Theo’s mouth and the way that Theo has clearly incorporated Liam’s rhythm into his own; letting Liam’s thrusts carry him further onto, and then off of, Brett’s cock.

Brett can feel Theo smirk around his cock. He just can’t _do_ anything about it except hang on.

But eventually Theo’s rhythm starts to stutter, because _Liam’s_ rhythm starts to stutter. Brett slits his eyes open—isn’t even sure when they’d fallen shut—and looks at him: Liam’s mouth is open and panting, and his eyes are glazed. He has both hands wrapped around Theo’s hips now, _dragging_ Theo back to meet his thrusts, and all it takes is one look at him and Brett realizes: _he’s close_.

Brett gets a hand in Theo’s hair and forces him up—Theo loosing a confused protest—and then _he_ sits up and forward, forcing first Theo and then Liam to sit back on their heels, Liam still buried deep within Theo’s ass. Brett drops a hand down to Theo’s cock—red, stiff, immediately twitching in his grip—to circle his thumb and middle finger at the base.

“Not you, not yet,” he tells Theo silkily as he tightens them, Theo’s arms coming up to first shove at and then almost immediately _clutch around_ Brett’s shoulders as behind him, Brett’s words apparently make _Liam’s_ hips buck. Brett meets Liam’s eyes over Theo’s shoulder and _grins_ at him, and gives him a short, sharp nod.

Liam’s eyes widen, but he catches on instantly. He settles back a little more firmly on his heels, and then thrusts _up_.

“Oh, you _fucking—_ ” Theo groans, collapsing against Brett’s chest, Brett’s fingers still circled around the base of his cock.

Brett just presses his mouth to the side of Theo’s face, right by his ear. “It’ll be worth it,” he promises. “You’re going to thank me,” he predicts, and grins _wider_ when Theo’s only response is to bite off an unimpressed sound and then bite _at_ Brett’s jaw; the only place he can reach as Brett holds him against his own chest, and Liam continues to thrust up into him.

Theo already would have tipped over the edge if Brett hadn’t been keeping him from it, Brett can tell, and Liam isn’t in much better a state: his rediscovered rhythm gets less steady, his thrusts shallower and more jerky. He folds over to bury his forehead against the curve of Theo’s spine and then _peeks_ out at Brett, expression beseeching, and Brett’s not at _all_ prepared for what that look does to him; he reaches forward with his free hand and _clutches_ it in Liam’s hair, dragging his head up and over so that Brett can kiss him over Theo’s shoulder.

“Do it,” he orders against Liam’s mouth.

And Liam does.

His hands fall down to grab either of Theo’s hips, and _pull_ him down hard into Liam’s lap, holding him there as Liam’s hips give a series of last, shallow thrusts and then still, Liam’s head falling back on a soundless cry and his eyes squeezing shut as they do. Brett’s fingers are still in his hair: he tightens them just for the way that he _knows_ —and which Liam’s reaction immediately bears out—will cause Liam’s hips to give one last sudden, jolting thrust. 

“Hngh, hngh,” Liam pants, half a whine, his fingers finally loosening on Theo’s hips—the thumbprint bruises of them almost immediately fading—as his arms come around Theo’s waist instead. 

Theo _jolts_ and bites off his own half-whine as Liam’s forearms brush his still-hard—Brett’s fingers still circled at the base—cock. He drops his head back against Liam’s shoulder so that Liam can kiss him. 

Liam immediately obliges him.

And then he sits back more completely on his heels, practically _collapsing_ onto them. Brett can see the shakiness of his limbs and he has an inkling of what Liam instinctually wants to do, so he sits up a little, pulling Theo with him, so that Liam’s softening cock slips out of Theo. Theo and Liam both moan—Liam’s more of a whimper, really—but as predicted, the second he has the room to do so, Liam twists around so that he can flop onto his back to the side of Theo and Brett with a long, heartfelt groan.

“ _Fuck,_ I forgot how intense all this can be,” he muses absently, seemingly to himself, but then he opens up the eyes he’d allowed to slip shut and grins at both of them. 

Brett grins back down at him, tempted to lean over and kiss him, but.

“I assume you have a vision, here,” Theo grits out, drawing Brett’s attention back to him. His hips buck pointedly in Brett’s grip.

Brett studies him for a second, and then smirks. He trails the tip of his nose over the side of Theo’s own, his cheek, as he replies, “I do. If you—” he brings his free hand around to skate around Theo’s back, dragging lightly over to Theo’s spine, and pausing, “—think you’re up for it.”

It doesn’t take Theo long to realize what he means. His eyes narrow, and his mouth goes mulish—an expression that Brett honestly recognizes more from _Liam_ than from _Theo_ —and he leans forward to capture Brett’s mouth, licking into when Brett just laughs, and opens for him.

“Do your worst,” Theo challenges, low and burring against his lips.

Brett grins right back. “Careful what you wish for.”

He doesn’t give Theo a chance to respond, just swings out from in front of him and then plants his free hand—his other still wrapped around the base of Theo’s cock—between his shoulder blades. He pushes him back down, _all_ the way this time, so that he’s flat against the bedspread. Only then does he release Theo’s cock.

Theo seems to understand _why_ immediately. “You son of a bitch,” he grits out, turning to glare at Brett; his hips buck helplessly against the bedspread but with his prone position there’s no _way_ it’s enough pressure, or movement, to get him fully off.

Brett just leans over him, closed fists on either side of Theo’s head and his knees in between Theo’s own. Beside him, Liam is already scrambling for the lube, having figured out Brett’s _vision_ , apparently. “I warned you,” Brett murmurs directly into Theo’s ear while Liam does, “to be careful what you wish for.”

Theo just glowers at him a little more, and then he twists, best he’s able, and manages to press his mouth up against Brett’s own. Brett follows him down to make it easier on his neck, and also because it allows him to do _exactly_ what he does: pin Theo to the bed from shoulders to hip with his own body. 

To his side, Liam finally manages to find the lube. Brett’s expecting him to pass it over, but instead Liam gets the bottle open and a generous amount drizzled out onto his own fingers. He reaches forward—Brett raising his hips up with a startled, _turned on_ moan to let him—to get his hand around Brett’s cock, and slick him up. 

He also, once he’s done—his eyes on Brett’s face and a grin curling his mouth—helps line Brett up with Theo’s rim, and holds him steady as Brett starts to press slowly, _steadily_ down.

There’s no way he’s not still massively sensitive from literally have just been fucked by Liam. He’s not human and his healing would have kicked in to erase some of the soreness, sure, but it also would have erased some of the _stretch_ ; Brett has to bite off a moan, and he does it by biting it off directly around the meat of Theo’s shoulder. Theo’s fingers curl in the bedspread by his head. He swears, colorfully and creatively.

But his back arches up against Brett’s hips. He looks back at Brett over his shoulder, and he gasps out, “ _Please._ ”

Brett _moves._

Under different circumstances he might rise up, get his own and Theo’s knees underneath himself and Theo respectively to give him more leverage, and room to thrust deeper, and more completely. But _here,_ but _now,_ he’s too determined to keep Theo’s hips pinned so that Theo can’t do more than ineffectually rub himself against the bedspread, trying to get friction on his cock that’s _never_ going to be enough. Brettt holds his hips down with one hand on his waist and the other braced flat along with a forearm by Theo’s head to keep him balanced as he _pistons_ his hips, and he knows for a _fact_ that he’s fucking Theo _more_ than deep enough by the sounds he’s making.

He knows it by the feeling of fire, of satisfaction, burning up his own spine.

It starts to coalesce into the stirrings of an orgasm fast, Brett already on edge from Theo’s mouth, earlier; from the whole night, really. And besides, he can hear the bitten-off whines and helpless whimpers that Theo is giving, Brett and Liam having both very deliberately pushed him to the edge and then _yanked_ him back multiple times tonight. Brett doesn’t need to drag it out. 

He doesn’t _want_ to drag it out.

He presses his hips up deep against Theo’s ass, and comes with his teeth—shifted, but not breaking skin—closed around the top of Theo’s spine; the place where Brett knew Theo’s awareness of him, and Liam, lives. 

He keeps them there as he comes down, his hips giving last, minute little twitches as the aftershocks burn through him. But finally he straightens up, pulling carefully out of Theo and then sitting back on his heels, one hand wrapped around Theo’s shoulders to pull him up at the same time. Theo winds up sitting astride Brett’s thighs, his head tilted back against Brett’s shoulder and his breath _panting_ against Brett’s neck.

“Brett,” he pleads, and Brett can’t help the _fierce_ surge of arousal that scorches through him when he realizes that Theo’s cheeks are just the slightest bit _damp_. “ _Please._ ”

Brett cups a hand around his jaw, holding Theo’s head to his shoulder and angling it up even further so that Brett can lean down, and kiss him. “Yeah, Theo,” he murmurs, and drops his other hand down to Theo’s hard and—Brett’s willing to bet— _aching_ cock.

But he only gets a few strokes in—Theo’s hips immediately bucking up into his fist, Theo crying out against his neck—before Liam’s suddenly _there;_ he leans down, flat out on his stomach once more, and takes Theo back into his mouth.

And that’s apparently all Theo needs: he comes on a choked, rising cry, Brett’s hand dropping to his hip to keep him from trusting too hard, or too fast, between Liam’s lips.

Liam gets his knees underneath him once Theo’s spent so that he can sit back on his heels, and drag the back of his wrist against his mouth. He _grins_ at Brett, smug and a little self-satisfied. 

Brett just laughs, and reaches forward with the hand he’d on Theo’s hip to yank Liam forward, and into a hard, _thorough_ kiss over Theo’s shoulder, Theo still collapsed bonelessly against him and really only being held up by Brett’s arm banded around his chest. He makes sure to chase every last trace of Theo’s taste from Liam’s mouth before he finally deigns to release him. 

Liam doesn’t go far. Instead he nudges his head up underneath Brett’s chin, some, so that he can reach Theo’s mouth instead. He kisses Theo just as thoroughly as he’d kissed Brett, his hands stroking down Theo’s arms, soft and soothing and rubbing a bit when Theo shivers. Brett keeps one arm around Theo, and hooks the other around Liam’s waist.

But finally Liam pulls back, and flops down onto his back with a heartfelt groan, his arms coming up to cover his face. Brett considers letting go of Theo but he’s genuinely afraid that Theo might just _melt_ bonelessly down against him if he does; he searches out Theo’s eyes to check them, and finds them hooded, and a little glassy, as Theo apparently tries to fully recover.

Brett can’t help _grinning._ He thinks, but doesn’t remind Theo, about his earlier prediction: _it’ll be worth it; you’re going to thank me._ Theo’s eyes clear a little to become a glare, like he’d heard Brett anyway.

But he doesn’t deny it. Brett grins again.

He also releases Theo when he sits up a bit, though Theo’s only reaction at _that_ point is to fall flat on his stomach parallel to Liam. He exhales out a huge, rough breath, and announces, “I’m sleeping here,” as his eyes slip shut. Liam raises a hand in the air, finger pointed upwards towards the sky, in apparent agreement.

Brett eyes the size of his mattress critically, and then shrugs; they’d fit or they wouldn’t. And if they _didn’t,_ they were all supernatural; they’d heal from any resulting falls.

He does briefly duck into the bathroom to wet a cloth with warm water, and bring it back out. He cleans himself up with it first, then tosses it to Liam, who gives himself a quick scrub before rolling over onto his side to press it against Theo’s lower back; a warning before he starts dragging it lower, since Theo’s eyes are still closed. Theo makes a high, bitten-off sound in his throat as Liam runs the cloth over his rim, but he doesn’t actually protest, just lets Liam finish cleaning him up.

Liam tosses Brett back the cloth, and Brett tosses it back into the bathroom. It lands where he’d aimed it, draped over the side of the tub. 

Liam and Theo are both already mostly asleep by the time he gets back. Neither of them, of course, has bothered to pull the comforter out from underneath themselves: Liam had just snugged himself up to Theo’s side—Theo now turned towards him—and called it a night. Brett rolls his eyes and winds his fingers in the bottom of the comforter, and _yanks_.

They both lift up, grumbling, to let him, primarily it seems so that they can collapse back down onto the bed in exactly the same position they’d been in once he’s done. Brett just laughs, quietly and under his breath, and climbs into the slice of space left on Liam’s other side, and pulls the comforter over all three of them. Once it’s settled he loops his arm around Liam’s waist, encouraging Liam back against himself and burying a pleased smile in the back of Liam’s neck when Liam immediately moves to let him, and pulls Theo with him.

He sleeps straight through the night, and only wakes up—blinking and groggy—when he feels the mattress shift underneath him. He squints across the bed to see Theo sitting up, his legs swung over the side as he apparently prepares to stand. When he spots Brett’s attention, though, he stops, and settles back down. 

In the early morning light eking its way in through the blinds covering Brett’s windows, his bracelet gleams a rich, deep brown. 

“Hey,” Theo says, leaning over Liam with absolutely no concern for waking Liam up, because Liam slept like the newly _dead;_ he doesn’t so much as stir. Brett rises up on his elbows—he’d ended up on his stomach with an arm thrown over Liam’s waist—to meet Theo’s mouth.

“Hey,” he murmurs back.

Theo pulls back and looks at him. His eyes flicker down to Liam between them.

His lips quirk.

He wonders, “How’s the surprise of me showing up? Still welcome?”

Brett’s first, new-jerk instinct is to let irritation— _anger,_ really—flare out from the core of himself. But then he stops himself, and really forces himself to _look_ at Theo; to study his face, and the set of his shoulders. Theo lets him, a look in his eye like he knows _exactly_ what Brett’s first reaction had been. Like he _had known_ exactly what it’d be, when he’d asked it. 

But, more importantly: like he’d wanted Brett to see him knowing all that, and then see the way that his expression is easy, his _shoulders_ are easy; his scent and pulse and the feel of him tucked up tight at the base Brett’s skull is easy. 

Brett reaches forward and tangles a hand in his hair, and pulls him in for a hard, firm kiss. He lets Theo pull back when he’s done but doesn’t let him go far, his hand still cupped around the back of Theo’s neck.

He tells him, “Always.”

Theo grins back. _He_ leans forward to kiss _Brett_ then, and Brett has just enough time to see the way that one of his hands falls to Liam’s back as he does; holding on, anchoring himself _to_ the switchpoint connected set of the three of them. 

Brett kisses him back. He layers his hand over Theo’s own, his fingers threading through Theo’s and brushing against Liam’s skin as he squeezes.

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/628012281672908800/from-the-wreckage-build-a-home-eneiryu-teen)!


End file.
